Old Lamp Gets a Facelift

022

A bearded face stares back from the image above. From the photograph below, it’s hard to distinguish the face at all—although the photograph depicts the same object, a Hellenistic oil lamp excavated during the 2014 season at Bethsaida, Israel, by director Rami Arav and his team.¹ The lamp came from Area A West, which was supervised by Dr. Carl Savage of Drew University.

The first image was taken using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a new technology developed to show the texture of a surface. RTI images are created by taking numerous photos of an object from the same angle—but with lighting from different directions—and then compiling them to create a single image with much depth.

RTI often reveals new information about an object’s surface that is not known from looking at an ordinary photograph or even by looking at the object itself.

In this case, it allows us to see clearly the decoration on the oil lamp’s spout. The bearded man has eyes the shape of coffee beans and a large nose. He was meant to represent Dionysus or a satyr. In Greek mythology, a satyr is a human-like figure with equine characteristics—often sporting the tail, ears and sometimes even the legs of a horse. Lovers of wine, women and pleasure, satyrs were the companions of Dionysus. They roamed the woods, playing music and participating in revelry. In Roman mythology, satyrs became conflated with fauns, another mythological creature that is half-man and half-goat. Thus, in some Roman depictions of satyrs, they are shown with large horns and the haunches and legs of a goat.

Thanks to RTI, this old face is visible once more in all of its original ugliness.

A bearded face stares back from the image above. From the photograph below, it’s hard to distinguish the face at all—although the photograph depicts the same object, a Hellenistic oil lamp excavated during the 2014 season at Bethsaida, Israel, by director Rami Arav and his team.1 The lamp came from Area A West, which was supervised by Dr. Carl Savage of Drew University. The first image was taken using Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a new technology developed to show the texture of a surface. RTI images are created by taking numerous photos of an object from the same angle—but […]